--WILLIAM BLAKE: Songs of Innocence.

Some days later, Lydgate was riding to Lowick Manor, in consequence of
a summons from Dorothea. The summons had not been unexpected, since it
had followed a letter from Mr. Bulstrode, in which he stated that he
had resumed his arrangements for quitting Middlemarch, and must remind
Lydgate of his previous communications about the Hospital, to the
purport of which he still adhered. It had been his duty, before taking
further steps, to reopen the subject with Mrs. Casaubon, who now
wished, as before, to discuss the question with Lydgate. "Your views
may possibly have undergone some change," wrote Mr. Bulstrode; "but, in
that case also, it is desirable that you should lay them before her."

Dorothea awaited his arrival with eager interest. Though, in deference
to her masculine advisers, she had refrained from what Sir James had
called "interfering in this Bulstrode business," the hardship of
Lydgate's position was continually in her mind, and when Bulstrode
applied to her again about the hospital, she felt that the opportunity
was come to her which she had been hindered from hastening. In her
luxurious home, wandering under the boughs of her own great trees, her
thought was going out over the lot of others, and her emotions were
imprisoned. The idea of some active good within her reach, "haunted
her like a passion," and another's need having once come to her as a
distinct image, preoccupied her desire with the yearning to give
relief, and made her own ease tasteless. She was full of confident
hope about this interview with Lydgate, never heeding what was said of
his personal reserve; never heeding that she was a very young woman.
Nothing could have seemed more irrelevant to Dorothea than insistence
on her youth and sex when she was moved to show her human fellowship.

As she sat waiting in the library, she could do nothing but live
through again all the past scenes which had brought Lydgate into her
memories. They all owed their significance to her marriage and its
troubles--but no; there were two occasions in which the image of
Lydgate had come painfully in connection with his wife and some one
else. The pain had been allayed for Dorothea, but it had left in her
an awakened conjecture as to what Lydgate's marriage might be to him, a
susceptibility to the slightest hint about Mrs. Lydgate. These
thoughts were like a drama to her, and made her eyes bright, and gave
an